NYU Alumni Magazine: Heard on Campus

heard on campus

“Our interest in living does not commonly depend upon our having projects that we desire to pursue; it’s the other way around. We are interested in having worthwhile projects because we do intend to go on living, and we would prefer not to be bored.”

—Harry Frankfurt, Princeton University emeritus professor of philosophy and author of On Bullshit, delivering the seventh-annual Lewis Burke Frumkes Lecture in Hemmerdinger Hall

“I was in Kabul [for] the inauguration of President Karzai. There were no traffic lights, no electricity, no army. We started from scratch. Sometimes when people blame the Afghan government for not doing enough, they should remind themselves that we started from a very chaotic situation.”

—Zahir Tanin, ambassador of Afghanistan to the United Nations, in the forum “Global Leaders: Conversations With Alon Ben-Meir,” hosted by the Center for Global Affairs in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies

“This country makes it seem like it’s just about being a celebrity, but being an actor is about being a storyteller, and society needs storytellers.”

—Two-time Academy-Award-winner and NYU parent Sally Field during a lecture “Life, Learning, and an Evolving Career,” sponsored by the gallatin school of individualized study

“I’ve interviewed young men who are just torsos and heads. The vests are so damn good [that] they all would've been KIAs in Vietnam, but they’re coming back—with no limbs.”

—NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on reporting from Iraq at the journalism department's Brown Bag Speaker Series